Arizona weekly citizen., 1887-07-09
A "PH0NE' EXCHANGE.
TROUBLES AND ANNoYANcEs TO WHICH THE GIRLS ARE SUBJECT.


 Young Women Of Good Physique Less
 Liable to Get Confused While at Work.
 Business Methods in Vocal Sen.
 sorium.
 visited the telephone exchange for the first time to-day. I beheld. as tbe door was opened, twenty comedy young women sitting in long row in easy arm chairs, before tables, with endless appa- ratus before them. That was the first fact that l grasped. The next one was that these girls were not shouting at all. There was low, intistinct murmur, and that was all As approached nearer I could hear, in toneS not much above @ whisper, the ever Ilonotonous "Hellol hello!' "No. 42S !" Hello, hello!' ssYe-esr' ''Good-byP' but one clear voice, in 6 good speaking tone, might have been heard plainly across that whole room above all the business of making the con- nections for over two thousand people.
 THE GIRLS AT WORK.
 Every girl had strapped upon her head. or at least held there by it's own grip, an apparatus composed of crossed steel bands. which held a sInall telephone receiver to her ear. Before her, dangling by a long wire in just such position as to hang ez- ectly in front of her mouth, was the trans hitter. Each girl leaned back in a com f1rtable attitude, and seemed entirely cool and unconcerned, while both hands were occupied in inserting wires with metal plugs at their ends into certain holes be- fore her and pulling them out again. There were rows upon rows of these little apertures, and every one of them repre- sented somebody's telephone number. Each girl takes care of a limited nun Der of calls, which are signaled to her by the dropping of little metallic tablet with the number of tho callers instrument upon it. but she has within her reach, in those little apertures that have mentioned, every one of the telephone numbers within the radius of the exchange.
 "These seem to be young women of ex- cellent physique l said to the superin- tendent, NIT. Carty, as he invited me to 6 seat by his desk.
 we insist upon that" said he; i've have found that girls of good physique, healthy young women, are much less liable to irritation and impatience, much less likely to get rattled, than those who are a little weak or ill It is not that the work wears upon thers so that only wO- men of unusual physique can stand it, but that We must have operators who are likely to keep their tempers and maintain sOolness of demeanor. Does it deafen them' l know of but one case of en op- erative's hearing being affected, and that might easily have been from some other cause. They do not seem to suffer much s.N hysteria here last week
 CALL FOR A SUBSTITUTE.
 "One of the girls-that one with the slender figure and dark hair, near the end of the line-got confused and 'rattled, es we call it, over a series of vexntions, and asked to have a substitute placed in her chair. You see that we keep five substi- tutes in the room to relieve those who de- sire to be relieved at any time. Well, this young woman went into the girls waiting room and had an attack of hys- teria there. Not infrequently something occurs on the lne-somebody gets impa- tient and loses his tempeE-which troubles the girls. They generally go into their room and have a good cry, and come back feeling better. They certainly seem to like the work, though the pay is only Si a week The hours are not long, they sit all day, they are relieved when needtul and the actual work seems to be agreeable to them"
 There was a strumming sound under the superintendent table. He held a telephone receiver to his ear and talked through a movable transmitter on tkf table. Certainly he said in a low tono, ''I will relieve you" He summoned a young woman from the window and mo- n T.. .N-z .n.. -. .N a.N the operators. He had been talking with one of the girls not fifteen feet away over the telephone. She could have spoken to him through the air by turning her head, but it would have made little noise and confusion in the room, and this modern tower of Babel, this vocal sensOrium of a whole city, is as quiet as public library reading room. The substitute girl took the others place, two ''calls' came tumbling down at the same instant, and somebody was undoubtedly vexed because he was not answered for an instant while she was making the other connection. But it takes but an instant.
 ''We like to have people who have tcle- phones come up here, said the superiE- tendent. "It gives them an idea how the thing is done, and We notice that they sell dom get impatient in the use of their tele- phones afterward." Certainly these girls were not trifing with their work. The superintendent by merely putting an in strument to his ear can hear every word that passes between any operator and the people with whom she talks, and that seems an almost unnecessary restraint. Vexation makes the work harder for the operator, and she avoids it. Women are found to be better operators than men though boys must be employed at night, and that is why the day service IS better than that of the night.-BOStOn Post.